25
MISSIONARY FINANCES And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Luke 12:22-34).
Jesus seemed to be calling His disciples to complete dependence on God to supply all of their financial needs. These needs were minimal: food, drink, and clothing. These were needs in the technical sense, not wants. Without food and drink, life ceases. Without clothing, social activity ceases. A shortage in these any of areas lies beyond what economists call the substitution effect. Dead men do not seek substitutes. Naked men find it socially difficult to seek substitutes.
How should we interpret this call? After His ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit, residents in Jerusalem interpreted it as a call to common ownership. "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved (Acts 2:44-47). This freed them from local real estate, which enabled them to flee the persecution that began after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). But how should we interpret it today?
A Call to Missions Jesus was calling His disciples to become missionaries in a hostile Jewish world. A missionary is uniquely dependent on God. He leaves his familiar environment and goes off into the unknown. He receives very little moral support from those around him in the new environment. Surely, he receives little or no financial support from local sources unless he has services to sell. He may be given something to sustain him financially by the church back home. But Jesus was speaking to founders of the original church back home. Their missionary venture would establish the model for missions, both foreign missions and home missions. There would be no outside financial support from earthly sources.
The disciples were in need of financial support. So, what did Jesus command? He told them to sell their goods and give their money to the poor. This would make them completely dependent on God to supply their needs. This would take great courage on their part. Courage was basic to the life He was calling them into. Christ's missionary boot camp began by abandoning confidence in physical possessions.
This act of economic self-denial would also reveal to themselves and those around them the extent to which they had broken with Old Covenant Israel on behalf of the New Covenant church. They had already entered into the kingdom of God, which would soon be transferred from national Israel to the international church (Matt. 21:43). By selling their goods and giving away the proceeds to the poor, the disciples would demonstrate their faith in a looming covenantal discontinuity: the progressive transfer of God's kingdom to the church, which was completed in A.D. 70 at the fall of Jerusalem.(1) This is why Jesus said, "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (v. 32).
"Fear not." These two words have condemned Christ's followers, generation after generation. Down through the ages, we have been told to "fear not," and still we fear. We have been told, "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment" (vv. 22-23). Yet we continue to worry, as the modern phrase says, "about where our next meal is coming from." But it is worse than this. The modern capitalistic West is so productive that very few of us ever worry about where our next meal is coming from. We worry instead about paying our debts, keeping our jobs, and paying our taxes. We worry about law suits. We worry about how people regard us. What good does our worrying accomplish? Nothing. "If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?" (v. 26).
Very few covenant-keepers believe Christ's instruction here. They do not live as though they believe these words. They rarely quote these words. When they do quote them, they seek ways to deflect their application. So, they do not really believe them. And when I say "they," I mean "we."
Most middle-class Christians stand condemned before God in this area of their lives. Nobody likes to be condemned. But to be condemned by the person we say we love, to whom we entrust our very souls throughout eternity, is painful. So, we assuage our guilt-driven pain by arguing that Jesus did not really mean what He said. He must have meant something else. But what?
If He meant that missionaries should become totally dependent on God to supply their income, then there should be examples of such missionary ventures in history. There are over a hundred of them today. They are referred to as faith missions. The pioneer faith missions organization, the China Inland Mission, was founded by J. Hudson Taylor in 1865. He first went to China in 1854. But, even before this, he had adopted as a way of life a policy of trusting in God for all of his income. He wanted to test God, to see if God would supply all of his funding. God did. There were times when the money came at the last minute -- literally.(2) These experiences persuaded him to adopt the same policy for the China Inland Mission. He took no fixed salary. He did not solicit funds for the mission, even at meetings held in churches where he had been invited to speak. He said, "Are we not told to seek first the kingdom of God -- not means to advance it -- and that all these things shall be added unto us? Such promises are surely sufficient."(3) He wrote to a Council member, "When our work becomes a begging work, it dies."(4) It was also to be a debt-free work.(5) Today, his successors in the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) follow his example.(6) They receive money from supporters back home, and they get a proportional share of whatever comes into the regional ministry's office for the month, but no salary is guaranteed.(7) The stories about checks or cash to the penny that arrive without warning at a moment of crisis are common with the OMF.(8)
A major financial supporter of Taylor's ministry was George Müller (1805-98). He ran his orphanages the same way. He had miracle after miracle in his career. He wrote in 1845, "Though now for about seven years our funds have been so exhausted, that it has been a rare case that there have been means in hand to meet the necessities of more than 100 persons for three days together; yet I have been only once tried in spirit, and that was on September 18, 1838, when, for the first time the Lord seemed not to answer our prayer."(9)
Predictable Income Streams This system of funding missionaries has numerous advantages. The main one is a reduction in capital requirements for launching new ventures. Capital generates income. It takes income to sustain any long-term venture. If a venture can be successfully funded by a predictable stream of monthly income from individually unpredictable sources, then the organization need not raise capital or purchase capital assets in advance. The organization need not spend time and money to buy capital assets. The major capital assets in ministries today are mailing lists of donors. It takes years to build up such lists. If an organization can gain a stream of predictable income to fund its activities, but without accumulating capital assets for which others are competing constantly, it can launch its venture early. A head start is important for opening up new missions fields.
Jesus' recommended method for funding missions assumes that an organization's income stream is predictable. Taylor proved that it was. Other missionary ventures have also proven it to their satisfaction. But this kind of predictability is based on faith and the self-discipline to abide by the terms of the program: not begging for support. This income stream cannot be capitalized or sold, meaning that it has no market price. This reduces capital costs to almost zero, not counting sinful worry and required prayer time, which is cheap: there is no developed free market for prayer time. Economists define a cost as the highest use foregone. If there is no capital asset that can be sold or rented, then it costs the organization nothing except prayer to generate income. If you pray to God to send money to fund project A, and God sends it, then this money is used free of charge. God is not sending it to fund project B. There is no "highest alternative use" for this money -- not without undermining the organization's source of future funding, which is so high risk that managers will generally not risk it. They know that a deliberate, systematic misallocation of funds will dry up the funding. This increases the cost of misusing funds. Economics teaches that the higher the cost of anything, the less of it that will be demanded. So, because there is no low-risk alternative use for the money, the money is used nearly free of charge.
A shortage of funds restricts access to any market. A shortage of funds limits access to mission fields to those organizations that adopt the faith missions strategy or those with considerable capital in reserve. Faith-based income is formally attainable on request. A faith-based income stream can be obtained by people with no financial capital and little monetary income. This opens up any God-designated mission field to faithful people who have not yet built up either experience in fund-raising or other capital assets. In the worldwide competition for souls, faith-based funding keeps the playing field not only level but tilted in favor of the God of the Bible.
Faith-based missions train people to work with very little. Taylor learned how to live on practically nothing, years before he went to China. He always gave away half or more of his tiny income. This is cost-cutting as a way of life. By reducing costs, this form of organization gains a tremendous long-term advantage. It can keep its people in the field when donations to rival organizations dry up in hard times.
Only a handful of people volunteer for a lifetime of service that has no visible economic security. This system of funding screens out people who do not possess enormous commitment. The screening process is continual. In the early stages of any enterprise, the staff's dedication is a highly valuable asset. The quest for personal security will undermine innovation. An organization may be able to operate in terms of the normal quest security in its later stages, after it has developed conventional streams of income, but in the early stages, the screening process is crucial for success.
Historical Examples In 1875, the China Inland Mission's budget one month exceeded its income by almost 235 pounds sterling. The money had to be sent to China. Taylor was in England at the time. He and the staff prayed, and that evening, a check arrived for 235 pounds, 7 shillings, 9 pence.(10) On another occasion, when Taylor was returning from a meeting, a man riding in the cab reached into his pocketbook and gave Taylor a bill. Taylor saw that it was a fifty-pound note. He asked the man if he meant to give so much. The man admitted that he had intended to give a five-pound note. Taylor offered to return the larger note, but the man refused. When Taylor arrived at headquarters, he found that the staff was about to send out a remittance to China. It was short forty-nine pounds, eleven shillings. With the note, they were now nine shillings ahead.(11) In 1887, Taylor set a goal of a hundred new volunteers -- an increase of the staff of more than fifty percent. To fund them, the mission would need $50,000. Also, the money had to be donated in large individual amounts in order not to bog down the staff in correspondence. The result? They received 102 volunteers and $55,000 from a total of eleven donors.(12) In 1927, twenty-two years after Taylor's death, the organization suffered a drop in donations of $114,000. The money remitted to the Mission in China had to be converted into silver coins. The price of silver coins constantly fluctuated. That year, however, the exchange rate favored foreign currencies. The organization profited on the exchanges by $115,000.(13)
Another missionary who relied exclusively on the same fund-raising approach was Amy Carmichael, who created an orphanage in India in 1901. Its doors are still open. An example of last-minute money came with the final construction plans for their house of worship in 1927. They had spent all of their money. The building needed screening to keep out squirrels and bats. The cost was 260 rupees. The mission received a check from the United States. When translated into rupees, it came to 270 rupees. The donor had written an explanation: "Something had impelled me to send you this further small sum with the word that it is to finish something."(14) It was mailed months before the mission had decided to make the purchase. Of course, it must also be said that Amy Carmichael was one of the most gifted prose writers in her day -- presumably the most gifted among English-speaking foreign missionaries -- as well as a superb poet, who wrote over three dozen books. That got a lot of publicity for her mission. But she never mentioned money.
In 1971, Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, decided to go on a missionary venture. He would deliver a Land Rover to a medical mission run by two women in Jordan. He persuaded his father to have his ministry pay for the Land Rover. London's office manager went to the dealership to buy the car, which had to be equipped for the desert. When she arrived at the dealership, she asked to buy such a vehicle. Impossible, she was told; the order would take several months. Every car was built on demand. She told the salesman she had to have it on Monday. He told her this would not be possible. She asked him to look around the building; maybe he would find an available car, fully desert-equipped. He dutifully did so, and found the car. It had been ordered by a Middle Eastern resident, but had not been picked up.(15) Graham and a friend drove it to Jordan.
At the mission, he received other lessons in faith funding. One Friday, he joined a prayer meeting. The mission was short $1,355. It owed the money to a Swedish medical company, but there was no money to pay the bill. On Monday, an envelope arrived. Inside was a check for $1,355. On another Friday, they prayed for $3,000. It was the largest bill they mentioned to him during his stay. Within a week, they had the money. On another occasion, they asked him to pray for $500. He did, but he did not think the prayer would be answered. The next week they received a check for $480.(16) That was close enough for God's work.
A Missionary's Lifestyle A missionary relies on God's provision to a degree that the rest of us do not. He trusts God to sustain him, or else he would not have become a missionary. The rest of us can only think, "more grace to him." Our faith is overshadowed by his. Yet he probably claims that he is only heeding his call. He says that he is not doing anything special. But he is doing something tremendously special, and the rest of us understand this. In the presence of a missionary to a foreign land, we should all hang our heads and think, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24b).
The missionary lives closer to the ragged edge of uncertainty than we do. He has few visible financial reserves to draw upon. Nevertheless, most people are only a few paychecks away from missionary-like dependence on God. The enormous productivity of modern capitalism's division of labor shields us from an awareness of how dependent we are on God's financial grace to us. A farmer two centuries ago was much more aware of how dependent he was on natural forces that were outside his control. He recognized his vulnerability to the weather. He was also at risk from sickness, fire, and accidental injury to an extent that modern industrial man is not. Modern insurance contracts have reduced individual risk by distributing it. The statistical law of large numbers seems to protect us.(17) So, we have learned to trust our social devices rather than God, who has graciously allowed the once-Christian West to discover the power of the free market to make our lives easier. We have forgotten Moses' warning: "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:17-18).
Has Jesus called every disciple to be a missionary? No. But He does call us to support missionaries through morally mandatory tithes to the local church and with our special offerings. Because we prosper, we can afford to send out more missionaries. But how many Christians pay ten percent of their net income to the local church? Very few. Of those who do, how many support missionaries with substantial additional offerings? Very few. In his challenging book, Desiring God, John Piper makes an important point: "God does not prosper a man's business so he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that thousands of unreached peoples can be reached for the gospel."(18) Piper is a strong advocate of foreign missions, especially frontier missions, which are aimed at completely unreached societies where nobody has preached before.(19) He quotes Ralph Winter, professor of foreign missions at Fuller Theological Seminary.
How hard have we tried to save others? Consider the fact that the U.S. evangelical slogan, "Pray, give, or go" allows people merely to pray, if that is their choice! By contrast the Friends Missionary Prayer Band of South India numbers 8000 people in their prayer bands and supports 80 full-time missionaries in North India. If my denomination (with its unbelievably greater wealth per person) were to do that well, we would not be sending 500 missionaries, but 26,000. In spite of their true poverty, those poor people in South India are sending 50 times as many cross-cultural missionaries as we are.(20)
Those of us who remain behind have an obligation to support those who go into the mission field. We are like soldiers who are on duty behind the front lines. We do have a duty. Our duty is to supply the front-line combatants. We are not out of the war just because we are not in the front lines. But because we do not hear the shells or see the wounded, we pretend that no war is going on. We pretend that there is not a continual conflict of kingdoms.(21)
Service in frontier missions is a front-line calling. There are other front-line callings. A chaplaincy in a prison is such a calling. A ministry in a crime-ridden urban ghetto is, too. The conflict between the kingdoms is all around us. There are many ways to serve God. But Jesus made it inescapably clear that the mark of a Christian warrior is a willingness to adopt the missionary's lifestyle, whether or not God calls him to do this. We must become like freedom-seekers who lived behind Communism's barbed wire fences for over seven decades. We must have our bags mentally packed. We must also have our ownership papers mentally signed. If we are assigned by God to high-income duty, fine. We must then use our high income to support kingdom-building efforts of all kinds. If we use our high income to buy comforts that we do not need, then we have missed Christ's call.
Rising Standards of Living Old Covenant law established a cause-and-effect relationship between national obedience and national prosperity and success (Deut. 28:1-14). Jesus did not annul this relationship. To the extent that missionaries' efforts are successful in persuading men to switch their covenantal allegiance from Satan to God, they are laying the foundations of an alternative civilization. This civilization will be more productive than the one it replaces. The question then will be exactly what it was in Old Covenant Israel: Whom will men praise for this increase, God or themselves? Success always leads to a great temptation: to return to Adamic worship patterns in a futile quest to be as God. This temptation must be resisted by covenant-keepers. Tithing is one way to resist. Resting from business efforts on the sabbath day is another. But having all of one's deeds of ownership mentally signed and ready to transfer is the supreme economic test of commitment. God can call them in at any time.
As we grow wealthier, we should be able to afford to give away a higher percentage of our income. We are able to buy necessities with only a fraction of our income. But this is not what happens. Those faithful South Indians who supported eighty full-time in the late 1970's put the rest of us to shame. They had very low incomes, yet they supported lots of missionaries. As Christians get richer, they seem to become more grasping. As they enjoy more comforts, they seek more comforts. They become addicted to comfort. Piper writes: "The measure of your longing for life is the amount of comfort you are willing to give up to get it."(22)
Piper's book is not a call for duty-generated giving. It is the opposite. It is a call for joy-seeking giving. He calls this Christian hedonism. Jesus set forth the basis of attaining joy: personal sacrifice. This lifelong process should begin in the life of every Christian with a self-conscious break from the lust for riches.
Home Sweet Home: Securing Territory Jesus argued as follows. First, take no thought about your future: what you will wear or eat. If this command is both literal and universal, it would annul all long-term planning by Christians. Second, look to nature for your examples, He said. God takes care of the ravens. He makes the lilies beautiful. But, on the other hand, God burns up the grass in summer. He cares too much about His people to do this, however. So, stop worrying about food and drink and clothing.
Food and drink and clothing are not supposed to be concerns for departing missionaries. Jesus never mentioned a home in this list of things not to be concerned about. Yet having a roof over their heads is one of the chief desires of geographically settled people. Men want shelter. Jesus did not possess shelter. "And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Luke 9:58). Jesus was not a settled man. He was a wandering prophet. But societies are not built by wanderers. They are built by people with a stake in the land. This is why the Promised Land was crucial to the generation of the exodus. Their children would inherit a place. This hope for the future consoled parents during their forty years of wandering.
Biblical inheritance involves a place. God's visible reign through His people -- their lawful kingdom inheritance -- is earthly. A place to live in history is a down payment on their final inheritance (Rev. 21; 22). The extension of God's kingdom in history necessarily involves home-building, just as it did in the land of Canaan. This goal requires secured territory.
Surrendered Territory
God's most visible curse in history is His servants' surrender of the territory and culture as the kingdom has moved westward. Christianity has surrendered huge amounts of territory. Beginning in the seventh century, when Christians surrendered militarily to Islam in North Africa, the domain of Western Christianity has moved westward in a narrow band of about 2,000 to 2,500 miles. Like a narrow beam of light that moves westward, Western Christianity has left behind nations in darkness. This darkness is now darker and more effectively secured by the enemies of Christ than it had been before Christians took dominion. Sweeping away the worst traces of evil is not enough. Evil must be replaced by something that is biblically sanctioned. Jesus said as much. Christians cannot defeat something with nothing. "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first" (Luke 11:24-26).
Roman Catholicism for centuries did secure the Iberian peninsula and Latin America, but always through State coercion, and always by way of compromise with secular natural law theory. Compromise is the legacy of the attempted medieval synthesis of the Bible, canon law, Greek philosophy, and Roman jurisprudence. Meanwhile, Protestant Christianity has surrendered its briefly secured territory. Luther never intended to secure territory except to secure freedom for Protestant worship. Neither did the Anabaptists, who have been predominantly pietistic since 1535. Radical Anabaptists disappeared after the debacle at Münster in 1533-35, where a pair of re-baptizing tyrants adopted communism, the community of women, polygamy for themselves, and military rule over the saints, only to be defeated by outside military forces led by a bishop. Calvinists tried for about 150 years to transform culture and secure territory, but for the last three centuries, this vision has generally been missing from Calvinist churches, honored at best only by an occasional brief reference to Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism (1898).(23) Premillennialist Calvinist Francis Schaeffer never did answer his book title's question, How Should We Then Live?
Christian theologians since the days of the church fathers have made major intellectual compromises with one or another secular social theory. Christians have generally adopted the outlook of the culture in which they grew up. This has led to various forms of pluralism in social theory and the defeat of syncretistic Christian cultures by covenant-breakers. Territory is no longer secured by Protestants; it is at best temporarily shared. Anyone who doubts this should read a government school textbook. See how much praise Christ and the Bible receive. Yet most Christians send their children to government schools.
Mobility Through Poverty Jesus told His disciples that their first step of discipleship was self-induced poverty. He said, "follow me." That meant abandoning job, family, and goods. Levi/Matthew was the supreme model. "And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me. And he left all, rose up, and followed him" (Luke 5:27-28). Levi held a party for Jesus at his home (v. 29). But then he joined the disciples in their wandering.(24)
The next step was the sale of their real estate. This was a fundamental break with social permanence. The only thing to match this for an observant Jew was permanent separation from the temple. This separation came in A.D. 70. After that event, Christians went their way, and the triumphant Pharisees substituted Judaism for the sacrificial system. The Sadducees, uniquely associated with the temple, disappeared from history. Finally, there was the nation's forced dispersion out of Palestine. This came after the failed rebellion by Bar Kochba in 133-35. But Jewish Christians had begun their dispersion prior to the fall of Jerusalem. They had been warned by Jesus a generation before. "And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled" (Luke 21:20-22).(25)
Jesus told His disciples in Israel to be ready to move. This meant that they had to be unencumbered with property. They had to be mentally ready for the end of the Old Covenant. They had to discover new ways to live. Paul did not impose similar obligations on the gentiles. He asked some of them to donate money to the impoverished church in Jerusalem (I Cor. 16:1-3). He did not call them to a life of poverty themselves.
The church through the ages has resisted any suggestion that every member is subject to Jesus' call to poverty. This call is for a minority. It is considered to be a calling above and beyond the normal call of duty. The church has long assumed that most of its members will stay where they are. And until the development of modern capitalism, most of them did.
Mobility Through Wealth With the rise of capitalism came the funding of technology. This technology included macadamized roads and steamships and trains. These developments have led to enormous mobility by reducing the cost of travel. In the United States, families on average move into different housing every five years. Employment offers lure men into new homes and new cities. Modern man has become mobile as never before. The costs of moving have dropped. When the price of anything drops, more of it is demanded. Geography is no longer destiny. The ideal of roots in a community has been ripped out of men's thinking. People's institutional loyalties are shallow. Their friendships are impermanent. They are on the move, like the Israelites in the wilderness.
This mobility has been achieved through the wealth produced by capitalism. Modern man has been willing to bear the costs of this mobility because there have been benefits to offset the costs. The benefits have seemed to be higher than the costs. The costs are rarely quantifiable; the benefits are. Some obvious costs of modern mobility include the geographical scattering of adult children, the weakening of grandparent-grandchildren links, the erosion of neighborhood loyalty, and the loss of long-term teamwork in employment.
Jesus recommended mobility to His listeners, beginning with the words, "Follow me." But the mobility that is imposed by a call to missionary service is uncommon, for the call to distant missions is not given to many people. Modern man has substituted the call of occupation for the call to missions. This call involves the offer of greater income, not a call to reduced income. Tens of millions of people heed this call every year. The result has been the creation of millions of functional nomads: people on the move without a final destination.
False Worship Luke 12:22-34 is parallelled in Matthew's Gospel. There, the religious issue is presented far more starkly. Men's failure to heed Jesus' words is said to be evidence of false worship. To fall into the sin of worry over money is to worship Jesus' chief rival, mammon. His words could not be more clear.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say to you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. 6:24-34).
Hold up these words as a mirror, and gaze into the reflection. What do you see? Does it make you proud? Does it make you think, "well done, thou good and faithful servant"? Probably not.
The more we possess, the more we worry. We worry about losing our sources of income. We worry about our pension plans. We worry that we might lose our familiar lifestyle -- a middle-class lifestyle richer than anything enjoyed by kings two centuries ago. (The good old days? Think "dentistry," says the libertarian humorist, P. J. O'Rourke.) This points to the addictive nature of wealth. The more we have, the more we want. The more we rely on our own resources, the more we worry about our vulnerability to unexpected changes, which are usually perceived as threatening.
Conclusion Jesus called His Jewish disciples to break with the Old Covenant order. One way for them to do this was to sell their goods and give to the poor. This was the most radical break that a person could make during the transitional period between the covenants, other than to become a foreign missionary, as Paul did. To make this break with the old order, a person had to have complete faith in God. His needs would be met by God, Jesus said. This took great faith to accept. The disciple would have to learn to trust God completely. This was a form of self-discipline designed to create a dedicated cadre of followers. This would not be a large group. Few people would ever do this. This Jewish flock would remain little. But the church would grow.
Before drawing final conclusions about the scope of Jesus' call to poverty, let us recall that at least four of the original disciples were fishermen. They were members of family-owned businesses (Matt. 4:19-24). They walked with Jesus for three years, but there is no record that they ever sold their boats. They kept their capital in reserve. After the resurrection, Jesus met with Peter and four other disciples at the shore of the sea of Tiberias. They were still fishing (John 21:1-3). They were still small-scale capitalists. When persecution came, they remained in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1).
Jesus gave His command in terms of a general principle. "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you." The general principle is trustworthy: by seeking first the kingdom of God, the basic needs of this life will be provided supernaturally. This is not limited to missionaries. It is the basis of the three institutional covenants' positive sanctions.
The modern industrial world is supplied with the basics: food, drink, and clothing. It has forgotten God, as Moses warned. It is addicted to more. Mammon, the god of more, has captured modern man.(26) The free market has made most people richer than ever imagined in Jesus' day, or even in Wesley's day. But the addiction to more has grown worse. The price of more has fallen, so the amount demanded has increased. Today, men neither trust nor fear nature or nature's Creator. They trust or fear the stock market.
Footnotes:
1. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
2. Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret (Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, 1935), ch. 4.
3. Marshall Broomhall, Our Seal (London: The China Inland Missions, 1933), p. 11; cited in Daniel W. Bacon, From Faith to Faith: The Influence of Hudson Taylor on the Faith Missions Movement (Singapore: Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1984), p. 29.
4. Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor, J. Hudson Taylor: God's Man in China (Chicago: Moody Press, 1965), p. 238, cited in ibid., p. 30.
5. Ibid., p. 30.
6. Ibid., p. 29.
7. Ibid., p. 144.
8. When God Provides (Singapore: Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1986).
9. Answers to Prayer from George Müller's Narratives, compiled by A. E. C. Brooks (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), p. 37.
10. Taylor & Taylor, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, pp. 143-44.
11. Ibid., p. 144.
12. Ibid., p. 157.
13. Ibid., p. 170.
14. Cited in Elisabeth Elliot, A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Revell, 1987), p. 293.
15. Franklin Graham, Rebel With a Cause (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2000), p. 87.
16. Ibid., pp. 98-99.
17. Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: Wiley, 1996).
18. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1996), p. 169.
19. Ibid., ch. 9.
20. Ralph Winter, "Reconsecration to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle," in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, edited by Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981), p. 815. Cited in ibid., p. 171.
21. Chapter 38, below.
22. Ibid., p. 203.
23. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids, Moichigan, Eerdmans, [1898]).
http://www.kuyper.org/stone/preface.html 24. Chapter 7, above.
25. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
26. See Chapter 37, below.
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